For 400 years, Taiwanese have been subject to foreign colonizers -- first the Dutch and Spanish, then the Manchu Empire, then the Japanese empire and finally the "Republic of China" KMT Chinese Nationalist Regime of Chiang Kai-shek and his son. In particular the last 100 years of first Japanese then KMT rule were brutal in attempted obliteration of Taiwan's Identity. Herein is chronicled the fight for its recovery.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The movie, Whale Rider, centers around the fictional story of an Austronesian Maori Chief who raises his granddaughter because his son, a fine art sculptor, leaves the troubles of the local Maori village with its fading culture for the big cities of Europe after the death of his wife and son in child-birth. His art is a union of traditional Maori sculpture with ultramodern art. Due to the efforts of the granddaughter to preserve Maori culture and renew the family and village, the son eventually comes back to the village and becomes reconciled with his heritage.

Following is an article by Jerome Keating, author of several books on Taiwan including Island in the Stream: A Quick Case Study of Taiwan's Complex History, Taiwan: The Search for Identity, Taiwan: The Struggles of a Democracy, and The Mapping of Taiwan.

Keating writes of Yosifu, an Austronesia Amis artist from Taiwan who also heads to Europe to make a name for himself through his art. Unlike the fictional character, Yosifu actively promotes his culture and homeland. He also comes back to encourage his community.
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As one of the first Taiwanese Aborigines to achieve international artistic success and recognition, he typifies the need for involvement at the grassroots level.

The Council of Indigenous Peoples and government agencies can set policies and hold conferences such as the recent 2013 International Austronesian Conference, but the level, extent and degree to which policies and actions are carried out often depends more on people at the grassroots level. Fortunately, in Taiwan that level is increasing.

There’s no one event or phenomenon that triggered this recent grassroots surge of involvement, though the increased use and ability of Facebook, YouTube and other social media may be a factor. In addition, art is a common denominator in many of the new grassroots projects.

Elise Tseng (曾珮貞) left a career in the art industry in 2011 to take charge of the Taiwan Cultural & Creative Platform Foundation.

“I saw that despite Taiwan having many artists, [art] had not yet touched and explored its basic base, namely its indigenous people,” Tseng said.

Her foundation sponsors workshops such as the one held by Yosifu. After researching Australian models of promoting indigenous culture, Tseng and the foundation used them to organize art and festivals.

One uses bó͘, "certain; particular," to particularize a mountain without specifically naming which one. Notice that in English the word "certain" has a broader range of meanings whereas Taiwanese uses distinct words.

• Unfortunately, because the R.O.C. government-in-exile suppresses the use of Taiwanese and other non-Mandarin languages in public schools in Taiwan, there is not much opportunity to learn the vocabulary of the non-Mandarin languages associated with an academic setting. Furthermore, few essay or papers in these languages have ever been written by students. The normal editing processes are never experienced. The following Taiwanese expressions describe editing practices.

* Underline this sentence = "kā chit kú ê ē-bīn oē sûn"

oē = draw ; sûn = line ; ē-bīn = underneath

[Notice the homonym: the noun oē 話 in "kú-oē" meaning speech/word and the verb oē 畫 meaning draw/sketch. These two homonyms are obviously different in their Han characters. But actually in the romanization, one has very little trouble differentiating them because of their distinct parts of speech and the noun often being associated in a compound word and the verb often being associated with an object -- e.g. kú-oē "sentence" vs. oē tô͘ "draw a picture" ]

Kho͘ is a verb that means "to circle" ; kho͘-á is the noun that means "a circle" -- just as in English one can say: "Circle this sentence." or "Circle a circle around this sentence." Or to get more fancy you could translate it as "Circumscribe a circle..."

* If the word or phrase is really poorly written, sometimes you should just strike it out. Taiwanese is quite vivid in the way to say that. Jack-the-Ripper fashion, literally, you say "kill/murder/slash that sentence!" = "Kā hit kú-oē thâi-tiāu." or "murder that word..." = "Kā hit jī thâi-tiāu." This word "thâi," meaning kill/murder/slash w/knife, is also what someone who is good at bargaining can do: Kā i thâi kè-siàu. "Cut/kill the price."

• Poa̍h-kiáu 賭博 means "gambling." In the fall of 2009 there was a referendum being held in Phêⁿ-ô͘ (Penghu or the Pescadores) on whether or not to allow gambling casinos ( kiáu-keng ). Unfortunately, gambling profits are often controlled by organized crime ( o͘-siā-hōe ) and corrupt government officials ( tham-ù ê chèng-hú ). Where you find casinos you also find drugs ( to̍k-phín ), violence ( po̍k-le̍k ), sexual crimes ( sek-chêng ), and human trafficking ( jîn-kháu ê bé-bē) where the victims are controlled with drugs ( iōng to̍k-phín khòng-chè in ). A few people or mafia organizations can make huge profits off gambling, but for most residents, there is no benefit ( hó-chhù ) but rather an accumulation of societal problems -- particularly addiction in its various forms.

· Taiwanese still has the saying with variations that basically translate as "An Austronesian Grandmother and a Hoklo Grandfather" --- For example,

"Ū tn̂g soaⁿ-kong, bô Tn̂g-soaⁿ-má." -- "Have a Han grandfather, but no Han grandmother..." With that intermarriage of Austronesian and Han that makes up today's Taiwanese people, I thought it would be interesting to share some marriage and kinship related terms:

Chheⁿ-ḿ 生姆 or originally written 青姆 means a son or daughter's mother-in-law. Mandarin uses a different word: 親家母

This expression "teh ùn tāu-iû" is used in social circumstances to describe very short visits. If someone "drops by" and then leaves, it is like dipping food in soy sauce.

This expression is also very appropriate to describe the attitude of the Chinese Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek's regime. They treated Taiwan as a temporary place from which they would fight back to China. They spoke of winning back China within three years after fleeing as refugees to Taiwan in 1949. So you can notice today that all the beautiful architecture is mainly from the Japanese era (pre-1945). The KMT regime put up many hasty structures, allowed squatter shack communities of former soldiers to take over many of the parks in the cities, and generally allow industry to heavily pollute the environment and degrade the landscape because they thought of Taiwan mainly as a resource to be exploited before heading back to China.

These two words are what the colonialist KMT Chinese Nationalist Party and the Japanese empire before them in Taiwan did in an attempt to destroy Taiwan's native languages.

• "developed baby fat from nursing" hàng-leng

When a nursing infant grows well with lots of fat rolls, one does not call the infant the common words for "fat" such as pûi-ê or tōa-kho͘-ê. Taiwanese has this special word hàng-leng for "baby fat." If you say that about a baby, the mother will be very delighted to receive the complement. Incidentally, the word tōa-kho͘ literally means "large circumference" and kho͘ specifically refers to the metal bands that circle around the old wooden buckets and hold the pieces of wood together. (Or think of whiskey barrels.)

In Taiwan, you can still sometimes bargain for things you buy. But unlike Thailand, it is usually pretty standardized so that people are not automatically marking up the price 400 percent because you are a foreigner. So even if you do not bargain, you can get a decent price in Taiwan.